


:: take it slow ::

by gracielanef



Category: BLURRYFACE - Twenty One Pilots (Album), Suicide Squad (2016), Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe - Heathens (Music Video), Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Gen, Hallucinations, Mental Instability, Prison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 12:31:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7508347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracielanef/pseuds/gracielanef
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the concert was going as planned until lightning struck. Tyler fell. the crowd screamed. next thing he knows, he's being dragged to Belle Reve, a prison for dangerous criminals secure in the middle of a swamp. heathens surround him. he can't tell what's real, only that Josh isn't there, and Blurryface is alive. (MV fic, based on the Heathens Music Video)</p>
            </blockquote>





	:: take it slow ::

June 21, 2016

 

The audience sprawled in front of him like a living ocean. Thousands of hands were held high as he climbed the stage's scaffolding, one rung after another. The microphone felt slippery in his hand as a heavy rain began to fall. He silently cursed the weather. Outdoor venues were never easy, and the night sky above held dark clouds they had hoped would hold off for the performance.

  
Josh was far below, beating down on the drums harder with every step Tyler took. The sounds of Car Radio washed over his ears, reminding him to keep moving up.

  
He reached the peak of the bars, pulling himself to his feet. Rain pelted his arms like ice-cold bullets. Bright light danced in the clouds like a silent predator, turning his stomach to lead.

  
_Keep singing,_ he demanded, keeping an eye on the growing storm.

  
“Give me one hand up!” He shouted into the mic, raising his own. His voice echoed over the speakers. The crowd followed suit, screaming in return.

  
“ _And now I just–_ ”

  
Lightning tore across the sky, striking down on the bars that held him. It lashed his face, and he felt the heat mark crimson tallies across his nose and cheeks. He felt the volts dance up through his arm, into his hand and spark through his fingers. The microphone dropped like a guillotine. Feedback stabbed his eardrums. The electricity raced through his veins, burned his throat to ashes. He felt his lungs deflate. The audience cried out. Josh’s beat paused.

  
He was dangling over the crowd, hanging precariously close to the edge. One hand held him steady against the freezing metal.

  
Thunder rumbled above.

He fell.

  
“ _TYLER!_ ” Josh screamed, jumping over the drum set.

  
His head hit the stage. The lights went dark. The audience deafened him.

  
Security forced people through the doors, a man over the loudspeaker called for evacuation, the rain poured down, the screaming rattled his head.

  
“Tyler!” Josh appeared, grabbing his arm. As soon as his fingers made contact he was thrown back, his body falling into shivering gasps on the stage next to him.

  
“No…” Tyler choked. He watched as crackling light bounced over Josh’s frame, behind his dark eyes. His bright hair hung like slack rope over his forehead. He gasped for air that wouldn’t come. And then he was still.

  
“No, Josh, _NO!_ ” Tyler cried out as a loud shockwave slammed through the room. He felt his lungs burn with fire, and his breath was searing smoke. His fingertips twitched erratically. The skittering light leapt into the crowd, into countless faces. They dropped like dead weights. More screams twisted painfully through his head, this time in horror.

  
“Tyler, stop!” He heard Mark shout, but the light snapped out behind his eyes. He crumpled. Jenna stood behind him, her mouth covered by a shaking hand. Tears formed in her eyes, ran down her cheeks. Terror clutched her heart as she backed into the speaker, shrinking farther from him like a ship swallowed by the horizon.

  
“Jenna?” he mumbled, extending a hand to her. But the lightning sparked from his fingertips, straight to her chest, “No–” he sobbed as her eyes turned glassy, and she fell with the rest of them.

  
He screamed to the pouring sky. The power was too much, so much, that he felt he was on fire. His limbs burned, his heart pounded against his ribcage. Josh lay like a fallen sparrow next to him, turning his vision to blur.

  
Sirens broke through his hearing.

  
Heavy footfalls scuffled across a now empty stadium floor.

  
Empty, aside from the hundred bodies that lay still as the ones on stage.

  
A gun was raised. It was pointless. Tyler let himself fall. His eyelids were useless against the violence surrounding him. He saw it all, replaying like a movie in his skull. And then it all went black.

~

They led him down a long hallway, lined on either side by cages of men who all wore identical orange jumpsuits. Some of them rested thick arms on the barred walls. He looked minuscule compared to them, but he didn’t bother to notice. He didn’t know why he was there. He was too terrified to ask any questions. His eyes were blank, resting longingly on the floor he wanted to be buried beneath. These were to become his new friends, these heathens surrounding him. Tattooed knuckles and scar littered faces. Bullet-proof funerals.

  
If he closed his eyes he could still feel the electricity surging under his skin. It was like snapping an amplifier into place, turning on the switch. The lights flickered around him. The guards holding him disappeared. He was alone in a prison of his own mind, walking down a dimly lit corridor to his resting place.

  
If he concentrated, he could see Josh behind the bars of his own mind, beating away at the drums like he’d never left the stage.

  
Tyler smiled internally, but his muscles couldn’t find the strength to mirror it. He stepped forward, resting his hands on the wall that separated them.

  
“Hey!” shouted a voice. He was forced back to reality, “Hands off the bars. Don’t let me see it again.”

  
Tyler stumbled back a step. His heart drummed madly in rising panic. Then it was clear. He was back in his cell, with his bed, with his drawings, with the scratches he’d left on the walls from countless nightmares.

  
There was a reoccurring vision that plagued his sleep, one where he fell from the stage tower and Josh died in his place. He hated sleep. He hated seeing Jenna fall like a bird with a broken wing. He hated looking out into the crowd and seeing death where life should have been. He paced his cell, he pulled at his hair and the sides of his head. Anything to keep the nightmare out of his mind.

  
The curfew lights had gone out an hour ago. He sat slouched on his bunk, staring at the wall as a drum beat madly against his brain. It became louder and louder until he finally turned his head.

  
It had to be a dream. Josh was sitting at his drums, practically drifting down the hall as he kept a beat Tyler couldn’t place. Behind Josh he could see the cell opposite him, where the serial killer cleverly named ‘Blurryface’ lay still like a sleeping dragon. He hadn’t said a word to Tyler since his arrival, only stared through the bars like he hungered to wring his neck. But no matter how hard Tyler tried to meet his gaze, he had only seen terrible dark glimpses.

  
Josh’s sound was fading, like a heart monitor tracking its last beats. Tyler snapped into focus as his adrenaline sent the lighting again through his veins. The scene before him warped until the bars parted. He stood, keeping an eye on Blurryface as he followed Josh’s trail down the dark hall.

  
He descended a flight of stairs, passed countless cells, down more stairs, and more, until he was so far below that there were no windows to shed light on the damp and dirty basement.

  
_Basement_ , he thought, reminding him of all the recording sessions beneath his mother’s house. He pictured his old setup against the dripping walls, his piano in the center of the room. How crazy they must have thought he was to want music over a scholarship. He chuckled as he remembered the venue Josh and–

_Lightning. Falling. Screaming._

  
He stuttered to a halt, breathing heavily through the memory. He shut his eyes tightly, forcing the visions from his mind. _Just a dream_ , he reminded himself, pulling at his throat. Just a dream. _Take it slow._

  
Josh’s drumbeats grew louder.

  
He opened his eyes.

  
The drum kit and Josh rested further down the hall. Josh didn’t look up. He seemed tired, and dark circles rested beneath his eyes. He kept hitting the drums, striking a chord through Tyler. Then he was gone.

  
Down a different hallway came the repetitive beats again, this time louder, more urgent. Tyler followed the sound like a dog after a rabbit. His shadows danced in the flickering lights.

  
He entered a room lit by a single bright platform, illuminating the wet stone around them with a warm glow like a thousand eyes. Josh sat with his drums, repeating the beat like a broken record. In front of him hung a dark bass guitar in midair, waiting next to the microphone stand. Josh glanced at Tyler, then at the guitar.

  
The smile finally grew across Tyler’s face, and as he stepped on stage he imagined his prison garbs stripping to pieces, freeing him. He took a deep breath, pulling the guitar over his shoulder. The strings were comforting beneath his fingers, and before he knew it he was strumming a chord progression unknown to his ears. The lyrics came easily, “ _All my friends are heathens, take it slow._ ”

  
Josh drummed with all the force he had. The lights around Tyler shone brighter. The music was loud in his ears, keeping a beat with his heart. He smiled, feeling the electricity hum through his bones and into the floor.

  
He wasn’t startled by the noise above him of alarms blaring and metal scraping against stone, of computers shorting out and mechanisms sparking, the sound of angry voices and bodies pushing violently against each other.

  
He imagined all his heathens, all his friends in the room; their orange suits creating a sea of people much like–

  
_No!_ he screamed against the memory. It wasn’t real, and here and now with his voice and his guitar he didn’t want it to be. Josh was here, doing what he loved most. Tyler sang with his best friend right next to him. He was alive, free of the prisoner cell. If he could help it, nothing would take that away.

  
Suddenly, heavy footsteps clambered down stairs, drowning out the drums and the guitar and his voice. In an instant they were gone. They were all gone. Angry voices rose like a tidal wave.

  
He sat cross-legged on the bitter cold floor, hands in his lap. His jumpsuit suffocated him.

  
“WATCH IT!” the leader ordered as six men entered the small room, guns held aloft.

  
Tyler looked to his left, expecting to see Josh next to him.

  
No one. The drums were gone. The guitar was gone. Josh was gone. It all became startlingly clear. They were never coming back. And neither was Jenna, or Mark, or the fallen people in the crowd. He was arrested for murder, those of his only lifesavers.

The lightning had destroyed him, and he in turn destroyed the ones he loved the most.

  
He felt a noose surround his neck, cutting off his breath as his fate was drawing nearer. The night reared above him like it wanted to tear him apart. His thoughts waged war above his throat. He prayed he wouldn’t be next.

  
His eyes fell on a figure standing behind one of the men. Blurryface, hidden behind a mask, stood against the wall like a deadly shadow.

  
“ _It looks like you might be one of us,_ ” The demon whispered as the guards closed in.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, I really hope you enjoyed. This is my first honest fic, and I'm pretty happy with the end result. The concept of the Heathens music video has been discussed before, I just decided to put my own 'super' spin on it, seeing as Tyler has some sort of power in the video. Everything is a hallucination, except for his biggest demons, it seems.


End file.
